Conventional monitoring techniques involve detection of emitted characteristic radiation, the identification of the energy of those emitted radiations and correlation of the measured energy or energies to the known emissions spectra of candidate radioisotopes. Various imaging techniques can be used in conjunction with the energy spectroscopy including physical collimation of the incident radiation, coded aperture arrays and conventional Compton cameras.
Detection methods such as gamma ray spectroscopy are sensitive and highly developed for determining the presence and radionuclide composition of radioactive materials. Gamma ray spectra are therefore useful for identifying a radioactive material, but not for locating it. Current methods for locating radioactive sources typically rely on collimators or intensity measurements at several positions, and require long data acquisition times due to low counts when the radioactive sources are shielded.